Rail travel Archives

I like York station; it takes me back to my childhood.

The first York railway station was a temporary wooden building on Queen Street outside the walls of the city, opened in 1839 by the York and North Midland Railway.

It was succeeded in 1841, inside the walls, by what is now York old railway station. In due course, the irksome requirement that through trains between London and Newcastle needed to reverse out of the old York station to continue their journey necessitated the construction of a new through station outside the walls.

York station has an amazing roof

This was the present station, designed by the North Eastern Railway architects Thomas Prosser and William Peachey, which opened in 1877. It had 13 platforms and was at that time the largest station in the world.

At one time the largest station in the world

As part of the new station project, the Royal Station Hotel (now The Royal York Hotel), designed by Peachey, opened in 1878. In 1909 new platforms were added, and in 1938 the current footbridge was built and the station resignalled.

The building was heavily bombed during the Second World War.^[1]

On one occasion, on 29 April 1942,^[2] 800 passengers had to be evacuated from a Kings Cross-Edinburgh train which arrived during a bombing raid.^[1]On the same night, two railway workers were killed, one being station foreman William Milner (born 1900^[2]), who died after returning to his burning office to collect his first aid kit.

He was posthumously awarded the King’s commendation for gallantry.^[2] A plaque in his memory has been erected at the station.^[1]^[2]

The station was extensively repaired in 1947.

I first went there as a baby in 1963, there was always a big Christmas tree and presents for everyone underneath it.

Of course it’s a lot busier now, and not how I remember it, but it still has that magnificent roof that always brings me back, and with a wider lens I could really do it justice.

On a Great Rail Tour of Europe in the summer of 2013, we were lucky enough to take the Jungfraubahn cog railway to the Jungfrau railway station at 3,454 m (11,332 ft.), the highest railway (and station) in Europe.

To see more pictures, take a look on my Jungfrau flickr stream
This is an amazing journey, even if you don’t really like trains – the engineering feat, constructed well over 100 years ago is a truly outstanding achievement; and one that Michael Portillo and millions of tourists have marvelled at for many a year.

In 1893 Adolf Guyer-Zeller conceived of the idea for a railway tunnel to the Jungfraujoch to make the glaciated areas on the south more accessible.

The building of the tunnel took 16 years and the summit station was not opened before 1912. The goal was in fact to reach the summit of the Jungfrau with an elevator from the highest railway station inside the mountain.

The complete project was not realized because of the outbreak of the World War I.

Somehow the 07.55 am Trans-Pennine Express to Leeds has now lost some of its allure, this was a proper train for proper mountains, and the scenery is nothing short of breath-taking!

The train into the mountain leaves from Kleine Scheidegg, which can be reached by trains from Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen via Wengen. The train enters the tunnel running eastward through the Eiger shortly above Kleine Scheidegg.

Before arriving at the Jungfraujoch, it stops for a few minutes at two other stations, Eigerwand
(on the north face of the Eiger) and Eismeer (on the south side), where passengers can
see through the holes excavated from the mountain.

The journey from Kleine Scheidegg to Jungfraujoch takes approximately 50 minutes including the stops; the downhill return journey taking only 35 minutes.

A large complex of tunnels and buildings has been constructed at the Jungfraujoch, mostly into the south side of the Mönch.
There is a hotel, two restaurants, an observatory, a research station, a small cinema, a ski school, and the “Ice Palace”, a collection of elaborate ice sculptures

Another tunnel leads outside to a flat, snow-covered area, where one can walk around and look down to the Konkordiaplatz and the Aletsch Glacier, as well as the surrounding mountains.